Tour of St Catherine North Police Divisional Headquarters
Remarks
By
Dr the Most Honourable Andrew Holness ON, PC, MP
Prime Minister of Jamaica
At the
Tour of St Catherine Police Divisional Headquarters
On
October 8, 2025
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Thank you, minister.
Let me thank the various teams that have organized this tour, the St Catherine North Police Division, and the leadership of the JCF, DCP Clarke who is here.
Let me also thank the team from the Ministry of National Security and Peace, our Member of Parliament and her team, and of course our contractors.
Let me start with a few words on the contractors. This project is being undertaken at a cost of approximately 2.3 billion Jamaican dollars. It is, by any measure, a significant expenditure in the capital budget. It is being undertaken by a local contractor that has very strong roots and history in Jamaica, WIHCON Construction, and they are indeed one of our premier contracting houses in Jamaica and we have had a very good relationship with WIHCON over these many years. Their reputation is solid, and they have been involved in many signature infrastructure and capital projects for Jamaica, and we are confident that this project will be finished in a timely fashion and at value.
Just to say however, that when the government engages in capital works, the capital works can only be executed by engaging contractors. In other words, contractors are an integral part of the government achieving its capital expenditure goals. Recently there was an observation made by the fiscal commission. The fiscal commission is a new creature that has been created in our oversight mechanism. Now we have an independent oversight mechanism for our fiscal operations, meaning how the government spends the public resources, our tax resources; are they being spent in the best possible way so there’s an independent entity to make observations, critique as well and one of the critiques that was made was the pace at which government is utilizing its capital budget.
There are many issues which would cause the underutilization of the capital budget, and I won’t go into all of them, but the one that would be of interest to us would be how contractors execute projects, the speed at which contractors execute projects. Contractors are an integral part, a critical part of the development plan. We tend to look at contractors as secondary to the process. More and more the Jamaican public will come to understand that contractors are integral to the process. If they don’t perform, the budget cannot be expended. And if the budget is not expended, then it means the growth of the country is slowed. If projects take longer than they should take, if they’re over budget, if they’re not done at quality, then the public loses so contractors are integral and as we move into this new phase of Jamaica’s development where we intend to extensively intensify our capital works, we need good solid contracting partners because it is the contractors who will bring to life the lovely plans that we have on paper and as being demonstrated here on screen.
This project, in its original conception had to be modified when you get on ground and turn the soil. For example, we have had to raise the site profile in some instances as high as six feet and as little as two feet because we have learned from other experiences where we have built on sites that were prone to flooding and then we would’ve had to take remedial action. In this case, we took the remedial action at the outset in lifting the site level to be about two feet or more above the road level and we also had to take into consideration that running along one of the boundaries of the site is a canal that could, in extreme weather, be prone to flooding so we had to build proper retaining walls to preserve the site and all of those would’ve impacted the original time of completion. We had projected that this would’ve been completed in July 2026, and we have modified that now to a completion in April 2027. I will still be around to open the site.
Now, we didn’t make too much of this in the consequential event in September because there are so many projects that are there being executed in varying stages so my presence here today is to also highlight to the Jamaican public that there are many capital projects underway in Jamaica, which will transform your daily lives when they are finally executed.
In this area, which is the Spanish Town area, we have two major projects ongoing. One, it is the construction of a new wing at the Spanish Town Hospital, which started before this and is moving a pace and this project; both are multi-billion-dollar projects that when they are complete, it will have an impact on the quality of life of the people in Spanish Town.
Now, when we are doing our planning for infrastructure, it is not a haphazard process where we say we’ll do police stations, or we will do housing. It has to be synchronized and coordinated. So, if you notice, we have chosen health and security; two critical things for the development of any area. Spanish Town, the old capital, has a particular kind of energy; an energy in commerce, in entertainment, in housing and transportation but the particular energy has to be properly harnessed. Otherwise, it could hamper its own effectiveness and success.
What we see in Spanish Town, is a great energy. For example, in our markets, in our transportation centre, in the town area itself, but this energy creates a kind of congestion. Literally, in the town itself, it’s very difficult to move around. It’s inconvenient and it hampers the growth of the area, and it also creates a certain level of insecurity in the area. And unfortunately, the area has been a haven to organized criminal enterprises.
In another town that is adjunct to Spanish Town in the Linstead area, I had to visit on Monday, a small community called Commodore, where it is clear that the murders that took place there were related to gang activities. It is beyond being described as unfortunate. It is really distressing that criminal enterprises have been allowed to take root in a historical area like Spanish Town and in a generally very peaceful area of the northern part of St Catherine, which is not necessarily urbanized, and they have really created mayhem.
To deal with this, it is not only necessary to have immediate policing responses through kinetic operations, whether it is the general presence of police, patrols and investigations, and putting in place zones of operations or states of public emergency or cordons and curfews; the routine police operations but it is also important to lay a stake in the ground and say we are going to build a state of the art, properly appointed, well-designed security facility. We are going to stake our claim against the gangs and the criminals and the organized enterprises that are engaged in the production of violence in communities like Spanish Town and we are going to remove you from the space and eliminate your operations. We are going to take over the space; that is essentially what this is.
This is a statement that the government of Jamaica, the Jamaican state, is going to put its money, $2.2 billion into the ground in Spanish Town. We’re going to take it over and we’re going to move out the criminals; that’s what it is. And I’m saying it in this way for all the stakeholders to appreciate. We have the chairman of the Chamber of Commerce for Spanish Town. We have the various leaders of the JCF for the area who are here, the members of the Ministry of the National Security and people who have a stake in Spanish Town listening that you should interpret this as the government putting in place the necessary investment to ensure that there is security in Spanish Town.
Once that message gets through, not just in the construction, but in the operation of this facility, I had euphemistically said that we’re building a police station, and I was appropriately corrected that no, this is a divisional headquarters, which means that it is not merely routine operations. There will be quite a bit of strategic administrative and planning operation, but more importantly, there will also be the community engagement here. It is going to be a very important part of the governance of Spanish Town and I am expecting that with almost 300 personnel stationed here with all kinds of operations coming out of this space, that the immediate lands adjoining, most of which are privately owned, that plans that were in the works from i was boy in Spanish Town, SPARCOM I remember, to develop all of these lands, that all of these developments can now come to fruition; that the investors who have been holding this land for a very long time wondering when will it be safe that I can come and do construction in Spanish Town. Once this station is finished and operational and the police who occupy it are properly missioned, that the ultimate objective is to make sure that development can flow into Spanish Town to take advantage of the natural energy of the people then we will start to see not just these kinds of development, but a whole host of other developments taking place in the immediate environments and in the outer concentric circles of the development area.
I want to say to the people of Spanish Town, I know it has been said that I am from Spanish Town, but I am really focused on the area- especially by your member of parliament, but we have been very strategic in what we have been doing. We cannot have development with gangs operating in the area. The people are going to have to decide because the gangs have created a culture, which in many instances it has become a counterculture enlisting people in its support and it is going to take some time. I hate to think it is going to be a generational change, but it’s going to take some time for people to understand that there can be development and security without gangs, but that can be accelerated depending on how the police and the other stakeholders engage with the people. It all depends on how this new station that we put here, how the people see it. Are they going to see it as an institution of oppression or an institution of enabling and uplifting?
The government policy will also be supporting and driving the view of a kind of enlightened engagement of the citizenry, which is why we have added on a new subject to the Ministry of National Security, and that is peace. We have to be deliberate now in not just trying to reduce murders that is reducing conflict, but we have to increase peace. The absence of conflict doesn’t mean that there is peace. Somebody might just be waiting until the opportunity arises. The moment we pull out the police, or this patrol stop, then you see a problem. What we want is when we pull out the police or the patrol stops, the peace reigns, the conflict does not reemerge and therefore we have to move to another step in our national security strategy in terms of how we engage the citizenry. And that means that the kinds of investments that we will move on to in infrastructure and otherwise, social investments, that will change.
Once this is complete, and while this is being done, we have to look at the housing stock in several of the communities that are adjoining or within the concentric growth circles, development circles of the area. Coming to mind immediately will be the Tawes Pen community where some of those houses are over 50 years old, they have passed their useful life and some of them are about to collapse, and the sewage issues and all the other issues that exist there. We’re going to start now with the development of a programme to address these issues in Spanish Town, the housing issues. Then we have to look at protecting the heritage assets that are in Spanish Town and create another kind of industry.
When I was growing up in Spanish Town, believe it or not, the Spanish Town Square, Emancipation Square used to be an attraction. Busloads of tourists used to come to go and look at the museum, the archives, the old courthouse. Some of those now, the old Georgian buildings are in a state of disrepair, we are losing the heritage value so we’re going to try and reclaim much of that and bring back that dignity and pride of our history in Spanish Town. Education is a major issue in the area. We have the largest high school in the Caribbean, the St Catherine High School, my alma mater. That school is overcrowded and others, St Jago High School I know, Spanish Town High and Jonathan Grant.
When I was Minister of Education, we were contemplating building a new school. We couldn’t identify the lands but that is now back on the table and there is significant energy within the area for residential housing and I’m certain that once the security guarantee is strong, you’re going to see many private sector developers coming into the area to have housing developments and at this point I would say that we have identified the greater Innswood development area. I don’t know if that is going to be in the north side or in the south. I believe it may be in your police division in the north so this would be of great help to the greater Innswood development area, which is where we’re seeing quite a bit of interest already in doing housing development.
Certainly, the police station that is there that was recently built, would be a great asset to developments happening in that area so generally, this investment should be seen as the spark of other investments to come. This capital investment here should be seen as a security guarantee that investors would need to de-risk many of their projects to come into this space and it is indeed the start of, I would say, the new era of development for Spanish Town.
One thing is clear, you cannot have development without security and so we have been making the investment in security. We have created a platform and we’re going to transition into other developments that will support the social, economic and educational development of the people of Spanish Town.
I am confident that within the next decade we will see a massive transformation in Spanish Town so for the developers, for the police, and the stakeholders; let us all work together to make this project the success that we know it can be. And again, thanks to all our partners and stakeholders.